Sometimes Bird Poop Tastes Like Candy
by heptapus
Summary: Lupus attempts to understand the ever infuriated Tanner Boyle. (Future Fic, Tanner/Lupus Slash)
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: **Lupus attempts to understand the ever infuriated Tanner Boyle.

**Author's Note**: Relies most heavily on new version of movie for background, especially for Lupus's description. None of the 70's sequels are taken into account.

**Warnings**: Language, Alcohol and possibly drug abuse, Descriptions and graphic scenes of domestic violence, homosexual relationship, graphic sex scenes. This is an "M" rated story, meaning if you are here then you should be Mature enough to decide not to read if you disapprove of anything listed in this warning.

* * *

**Sometimes Bird Poop Tastes Like Candy**

_Chapter 1_:

Clouds are like whispers. Soft. Light. Buoyant. Easily carried away with the wind. I watch them above me, forming and dispersing, their own endless cycle of life and death. Beneath me the grass is wet. It seeps through my gym shorts – horrible, mesh, maroon colored things that creep up unpleasantly. It cools my skin.

This day is warm. This day is nice. There is hardly a breeze and the clouds that I watch move slow and are a brilliant, stark white. They sit low in the sky and hover over the sun like a theater curtain that can't be pulled because the rope and pulley are broken.

I pulled the curtain for the last school production; _Frog and Toad_. I did a very good job, never missed a cue. Miss Landris, the drama teacher, could never remember my name. I didn't mind, she never called on me.

I don't like to be called in class. That morning Mr. Digger, algebra teacher, I think...or maybe I'm in geometry this year...well, he called on me. I had to walk up to the board, solve a problem. He stood at my shoulder, tap-tap-tapping his fingers against his arm. It was very distracting. Everyone watched me, their eyes hot on my back. My face had been very, _very_ red. I know because I was told so later.

Everyone laughed. As usual.

I could devour those clouds. I imagine they feel like cotton candy, fibers melting on my tongue. I don't imagine they have much of a taste. Like rainwater, maybe, hot and slightly acidic. Sometimes people see shapes and objects in clouds.

I don't.

I just see clouds.

And a ball. Small, round, also white like the clouds but slightly scuffed and stained with dirt from the infield. It spirals down towards me and...

POP!

Everything is black. Then blurry. People stand over me. A boy is hovering, knelt beside me, his face fills my eyes. I know him. Shaggy blond hair, clear blue eyes. He calls my name. He looks concerned, that space between his eyebrows just above the bridge of his nose is very wrinkled. He seems breathless but calls to me despite.

"Loop..._Lupus_! Are you alright?"

"Move back, Boyle," a gruff voice barks. The boy is shoved aside and I immediately miss his face. I like that look he wears, it hurts my chest in a strangely good way.

A grown man's face replaces the boy's. Balding and bulldog-ish, frowning. He wears a blue t-shirt taut around his flatulent belly and meaty arms. A silver whistle bounces against his chest on a long chain. He likes to blow that whistle to get our attention. Usually when he already has it and when we're all standing close. It's loud, shrill, claws at my ears so that I can't help but cover them and hope he stops.

The man – he's our Phys Ed teacher Coach Murdoch – looks me over. I'm used to being looked at like that. Like a perpetual disappointment. He waggles several fingers in front of my face. They remind me of thick, pink sausages.

It make me hungry.

I had a tuna on white for lunch. It was smothered in ketchup and the other people at the table made faces at me and said nasty things about it. But that was a couple hours ago and we've been outside for nearly twenty minutes. My stomach rumbles.

"How many, Timothy?" Coach Murdoch asks. The other boys are whispering now. Clouds billowing by on a gentle breeze.

I have a bag of popcorn at home. Its in the bottom of my sock drawer. There's less than half-left, but its kettle corn. So sweet and salty, thinking about it makes my mouth water. I wonder how long we have left of school.

"Timothy..._Timothy Lupus_!"

I startle.

Coach looks pinker than usual, except for the skin around his mouth, its turning white. I think because he's pressing his mouth so tightly together.

I pull myself to sitting.

The entire class has surrounded me and are watching; some with smirks like Gargoyle statues from ancient Gothic style buildings – I saw them on a postcard – and some with obvious boredom.

Except for that boy.

He stands close by me with arms folded and foot tapping nervously. Still that worry edges his features. It's nice. Much nicer than the anger that's usually there.

Tanner.

Tanner Boyle.

I decide then that his name suits him. He is a pot always ready to boil over. Those clear blue eyes of his, usually cutting the world apart with a razor sharp glare, are looking at me. Looking into me.

A shiver races my spine.

I suddenly realize I should say something.

"I like to eat popcorn kernels. They're crunchy," I admit quietly. It seems somewhat appropriate.

Well, actually I'm not really sure how appropriate it is but Tanner is awash with relief which must mean it wasn't an entirely wrong thing to say. Maybe. I think.

"Great. His brain's rattled," Coach Murdoch curses, tossing his hands violently in the air and I wince guiltily because when I'm near and someone is upset it's usually at me, "All I need is for that goddamn PTA to take baseball away and soon all you boys'll be left with are wiffle balls and frisbee."

"No, no, Coach," Tanner interjects quickly, "His brain was rattled long before getting smacked with any damn baseball. He's fine. Trust me. I've smacked him with _a lot_ of baseballs. He's just being Lupus."

Coach Murdoch doesn't seem convinced. He stares at me for a long time with displeasure, which I'm used to but it still makes me feel uncomfortable. I hope Tanner will say something again. I like when he speaks up for me. He always says the words I want to say but I don't know I want to say them until the moment he does.

"Right." Coach Murdoch sniffs loudly, shifts his gaze to the ground and kicks at the grass casually. He mumbles, "Better send him to the nurse anyhow, make sure he ain't concussed or something." He clears his throat loudly then and to Tanner says, "Alright, Boyle, take Timmy up to Nurse Goodkind."

The anger swarms Tanner's face again. He reels on Coach.

"What?!" he explodes, "Why do I gotta do it?"

"Don't act like you don't want to, Boyle," one of the boys, Freddy or Teddy...something like that, says. Or jeers, actually. Because Freddy-Teddy-something is the type of boy who jeers.

"Yeah," another boy – his name reminds me of a rodent, or a bird, or some other animal – pitches in, "You'll want to make sure your _girlfriend_ makes it safe and sound."

I blink. I didn't know Tanner had a girlfriend. I look around for her. The other boys are laughing, making more comments about this person I had never even heard of. I wonder why I'm the only one who didn't know.

"Boys," Coach Murdoch admonishes half-heartedly. He's still staring at the ground, hands on his hips and shaking his head. I think he's still upset about the PTA, at least, that's what he said. I think. He glances at me every now and then and the weary look makes me squirm.

Tanner thuds his mitt, actually, it's the school's mitt because it belongs to the school but anyway...he thuds it to the ground and turns on the boys. I've seen that look now on his face before. I'm very familiar with that look. His hands are curled into fists, clenched at his side and poised to attack. His lip is curled in a sneer, tongue behind also poised to attack.

"Shut it, Beiderman," he growls warning. I don't know which boy is Beiderman. Maybe Freddy-Teddy-something.

"Oh, what's the matter, Boyle? Are you mad I beaned _you're_ _girlfriend_?" Freddy-Teddy-something, again, jeers.

Yeah. He's probably, definitely, maybe, perhaps Beiderman. I notice his nose is slightly upturned, snout like. He isn't very tall, and his arms and legs are stubby. He makes me think of a pig.

I saw a pig once. In the third grade. We went on a class field trip to a farm...Perkins Farm, I think it was called. There was a large pig there, almost three times my size...or at least, my size in third grade. It was brown and black. It rolled in the mud and when I got close to its pen it grunted at me. I cried. My teacher let me sit on the bus the rest of the trip.

The busdriver, a heavyset woman with peppery hair, had sat in her driver's seat and read to me from her book. I didn't quite get what she was reading and I told her so. _It's romance_, she had explained, _you'll understand it when you're older._

Older now. Still don't get it.

"Did you see the way Boyle ran over when you hit him? Oh, he was so scared for his spazhoid girlfriend," the other boy laughs. He has red, red, red, red hair. It furls and curls and twines around itself. He also has an endless supply of freckles. They dot every available inch of his milky face and scatter down his neck.

"That's it," Tanner has boiled over. He shoves one of the boys, "You wanna go!"

They all are ready until Coach Murdoch blows his whistle. It grates my ears and I slap hands protectively over them. Then he drops it, with a thump-thumpity-thump against his blubbery breast and grabs Tanner's collar. He yanks back, hard, and Tanner gags.

Instantly, Tanner's fury dies, settling now to a low simmer.

"That's enough," Coach roars, "You boys. Mile. Now. Start running."

Groans wave from the mass of boys. They toss down their mitts – school's mitts – and reluctantly begin their jogs around the field. Coach has his attention on Tanner again. Their eyes are locked with one another. I can't decide who has the fiercer glare. Tanner, probably. If fights were won by sheer force of rage alone, then Tanner would win every time.

But they aren't.

So he doesn't.

"Boyle, what the hell's wrong with you! This is the same shit that got ya' kicked off the team. Now get _him_ off the ground and to the Nurse's office. _Pronto_!"

Coach Murdoch spins on heel and marches away at that, satisfied his commands have been effectively commanding. Now he'll go sit on the far bench and eat the large party sized bag of M&Ms he has shoved in his pocket while waiting for the boys to finish jogging. If he's still upset, he'll make them run again.

Tanner grumbles things I can't hear but am sure are profane and violent. He grabs my arm and jerks it, a silent demand to get on my feet. I let him drag me up because I like the way his fingers wrap around my bicep, encircling it entirely. There's something comforting in the way he touches me. I think because, rough as it may be, it seems gentler than it would be were I someone else. Maybe. I think.

I follow Tanner from the field, swiping the grass blades and dampness from my bottom and my legs. He stalks along the cement pathway leading to the main school building. His arms hang stiff at his side and he mutters things under his breath. Sometimes I hear them, mostly I don't. They sound like things that would make me blush.

I think about how he looks now. And how he looked then. When we first met. Not met, met; as in the first time we saw one another, were told the others name, because that was years before. But when we first _really_ met. Five years ago, on a baseball field. We were bears then. And we were bad news.

Tanner was angry all the time, sort of like now, but not really. His anger seemed to go in all directions back then, and now it seems more focused. He was short. Shorter than everyone. Shorter than me. And he was scrawny. Of course, we were all scrawny then, twiggy arms and beanpole legs. But he felt large. His presence filled a room.

Now he's taller. Still shorter than most, but taller than he was and taller than me. Everyone is taller than me now. He isn't scrawny now, either. He's still slender, but carved with lean muscle. Swimmers have that same physique, I think, slim and toned. He doesn't swim. Well, I'm sure he does for fun, but not on a team or anything.

I've heard girls call him 'cute', and even once 'sexy'. I'm still scrawny. And girls don't talk about me. At least, not that I know of. It doesn't bother me though. I think I prefer it that way. I wouldn't like the attention.

His presence still fills a room. Or maybe it doesn't and I just think it does.

"I didn't know you had girlfriend," I say it because I feel like I should say something. And it sort of stings that I didn't know and somehow I think saying it aloud will make the stinging stop.

"I don't."

Wow. It worked.

"Oh."

We're silent. Our pace is slow and the school feels forever away. Which I like. The longer it takes, the longer we have. It was nice to be near someone. Walking beside him as though we were a pair and not two individuals headed to the same place.

When we played baseball, back when we were bears, it was always like this. He and I, us and them. I was never alone. Never lonely. But now we don't play baseball. We aren't bears. And I'm always alone. Always lonely.

"He was talking about you," Tanner mutters. He's making an effort to sound annoyed but his words just seem resigned.

I think about what he's said. Oh. _I_ was Tanner's girlfriend. The thought heats my face and causes my belly to lurch. I'm not sure what it is that unsettles me, being called a girl or being called _his_ girl.

Maybe it's both.

"Me."

Maybe it's neither.

"Yeah. You. And geez, Loop, would it've killed ya' to pay attention for one goddamn half-hour. You were right field, for crying out loud. All you gotta do is watch for the ball and put you're mitt up when it's coming – if it ever comes. That's all. Why's that so fucking hard?"

I shrug. Tanner sniffs loudly. He opens the school door, lets me walk through first, then follows me inside. We shuffle down the tiled hallways, our footsteps echoing like a symphony.

Tanner looks like he's thinking, brow scrunched again and lips pressed thin. He watches the tile pass beneath our feet. So I decide to think too. About right field.

In league baseball, right field is where the weakest fielder but stronger batter is put, because in league baseball, you're always one or the other. In High School Phys Ed baseball, right field is where the strange kid no one wants to actually catch a ball thrown from is banished, because in High School, you're only there for the participation points.

I always play right field.

At least when I was a bear it didn't feel like a punishment for existing.

"How's you're head?"

Tanner is looking at me again with that worry and my heart catches for a moment. Those clear blue eyes are swallowing me whole. We've reached the nurse's office and are stopped. He leans back against the door. We aren't going in, not yet. I don't mind. I like to watch him. He is an endless swirl of energy. Even standing still he seems to be in constant motion.

He's waiting for a reply and I wonder what I should say. I had forgotten why we came there.

"My head?"

He rolls his eyes. Maybe that was wrong.

"I told Coach this was a waste of time. Beiderman couldn't hit the ball hard enough to crack a window; let alone your skull."

Tanner smirks at me and I smile back instinctively.

It feels like summer. The way summer was five years ago, four years ago, three; back before expectations, puberty, the league draft, and high school devoured, divided, destroyed our team. Summer. When we were the Bad News Bears. Unbeatable, no. Unstoppable, always.

"I miss summer," I tell him because I think he'll understand. He gives me a questioning look and I realize, sadly, that he doesn't.

The bell rings, an ecstatic, high-pitched pulsing overhead. I flinch and Tanner sighs.

"Shit. Now I gotta walk all the way back to the locker room and change. You think that asshole Murdoch'll give me a hall pass? Fuck, no." He kicks away from the door and starts back the way we came. I begin to follow him and he stops me, "Listen, Loop, just stay here and tell the nurse you got conked with a ball and aren't feeling well. Even if ya are. That'll get ya' outta've last class or at the very least a hall pass."

I want to say something more, ask him to stay, try to explain our loss of childhood aching in my soul, but he disappears into the flood of other kids now bursting out of their classrooms into the hall before I can think of the words.

I decide in that moment, in a weird way, Tanner Boyle is also like a whisper.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

My mom has a robe so chalky pink it may have very well been dyed in Pepto-Bismal. She wears it now, the tattered edges brushing noisily along the Parquet flooring as she walks into the kitchen. It hangs loose off her bone-thin figure and is open in the front displaying a semi-sheer nightgown.

A lot about her can be summed up by the word 'dangle'. Stringy, unwashed hair dangles in her face. An unlit cigarette dangles from her bottom lip. And her unbound breast dangle like apples in a pair of tube socks.

"Did you take your pills?" she asks. She holds a lighter, a gold Zippo, to her cigarette tip and flicks the wheel flint several times before it lights. Her fingernails are covered in chipped red polish. It looks like blood. I think about her clawing into another person's skin, the flesh peeling away beneath her digging nails. I shudder.

"Yes," I say. I didn't. But telling her I did will make her stop asking me.

I'm sitting at the bar. A piece of paper is in front of me. A text book is open. I have a pen in my hand. Obviously, I'm doing homework but I don't know what class it's for and I'm not entirely certain of the assignment.

My mom opens the refrigerator door. She looks inside, moves a few things around to see behind them, then closes the door again without removing anything.

"You'd better of taken your pills. Remember what happened last time you didn't."

"Yes."

Not really. Just bits and pieces, like chunks of food in vomit. I spoke to someone. I did some things. I may have laughed a lot. I may have cried a lot. I may not have done either.

I only really remember the table. I climbed underneath it, lay on my back and glued – _super_ glued – pictures to it. I plastered the bottom with glossy still frames of people I knew and places I had been. Some were pictures of friends – when we were bears, some were pictures of family, and most were pictures of strangers that I had sneaked shots of as they walked past or were sitting not paying attention to me.

I had built myself a sky of good memories.

I don't really recall why I did it. Even now, the motives seem so far away and unexplainable. Like watching someone else's dreams.

My mom found me underneath the table hours later. I had fallen asleep. She made me take my pills then I spent the next day scraping the pictures off. It made me sad. Some of them were my only copies. I thought about the memories, I was peeling them away like scabs over skin not quite yet healed, so blood bubbled up to the surface and spilt to the ground.

And I cried.

"Where is my bottle of Jack?" my mom asks. I stare at my paper. There are lines across it. Swirls, stars, hearts, just random shapes, nothing substantial. Pencil markings can be erased so they don't have to be important.

"You drank it all."

She makes a face. "What about my Smirnoff?"

I don't miss a beat. My pencil point drags across the top corner of my paper. "You drank it."

"My vermouth?"

I look up at her blankly. She throws her hands up in disgust and storms back to her bedroom. I can hear things being dug through, being tossed aside, slammed around. She isn't searching for anything, there's nothing to be found.

I return to my paper. I hope this homework is not important. The phone rings, so I put my pencil down, slide clumsily from the stool I'm sitting on, and answer it. There's a man on the other end. He wants to talk to Jeremy Tanker. My uncle.

I tell the man he isn't home.

The man asks when will he be back.

I say I don't know.

Will you have him call me.

I can tell him to, but I don't think he will.

I'll just call back later.

Click.

Good bye.

I put the phone back in its cradle and lay down on the couch. My uncle owns everything. The house. The phone. This couch. The floor under my feet and the roof over my head, he always says. Or roars. My uncle likes to roar. Like a lion, only I imagine a lion would be afraid of my uncle's roar.

I saw a lion once. At the San Diego Zoo. We all went together, back when we were bears. Our coach – it wasn't Murdoch...Buttermaker, his name was Buttermaker – rented a bus. We loaded on and I didn't have to sit alone like I do now because the others wanted to sit next to me, to talk to me, to include me. It was a good time. We sang songs on the ride and played games; Tanner – Tanner sat behind me – punched my arm a few times shouting something about bugs.

When we got there, to the zoo, we saw monkeys and elephants and even a giraffe. And the lion, of course.

At the koala tanks, Engleberg – he was very fat then but he isn't so much anymore; he and Tanner spend a lot of time at the school weight room because he's on the baseball team and can go whenever he wants, Tanner isn't on the team but he just goes anyway...well...anyhow, Engleberg told us _the leaves they have to eat also make them high so that they're always stoned_.

Then Tanner said, _kind of like you, Loop, _and patted my back hard enough to chatter my teeth. I wasn't sure what he meant but he grinned at me and I never can help but smile when he looks at me like that.

Later, I got tired and found a bench to sit on while everyone else wandered off. When I couldn't find them again, I went back to the bus and lay down in the backseat, thinking about koalas and wondering what kind of animal everyone else was.

I mean, besides bears.

The team was very angry when they got back to the bus. They yelled at me, but I don't remember why. It was really late and dark outside, the zoo had already been closed for an hour. I remember thinking that I was the one that should have been angry but I didn't say so.

The only one that didn't yell at me was Tanner. He sat in the front seat of the bus, staring forward so I couldn't see his face. Even when I said sorry – though I'm still not entirely sure what for – and the driver started for our hotel, he never turned around.

I always wonder what his face looked like then.

I only ever had one picture of Tanner, of _just _Tanner. I glued it to my sky of good memories when I forgot to take my pills. Later, when I was scraping the sky away, I noticed I had put it in the center. It may have been the first picture I hung, the rest spiraling out away from it. Like the sun in my sky of good memories. Now, I don't have any pictures with him, they all got scraped away. I don't have anymore pictures of any of them.

Tanner is a wolverine. I had to look up different animals to figure it out. There were a lot of animals I thought about him being; rhinoceros, alligator, anole lizard, but none of them were right.

I read about the wolverine in a National Geographic at the library. The magazine had been disassembled, its pages laminated with plastic, then spiral bound. I could imagine somebody, somewhere, taking care to neatly slice each glossy sheet from its binding, carefully pressing it between two slivers of plastic, then melting that plastic together, filled with the hope that they would perfectly preserve those glossy sheets with their serif type face paragraphs and blue-footed booby photos for all eternity.

I remember thinking at the time that it wasn't a magazine anymore, not really. It was more like Frankenstein's monster, a poor facsimile of something it once in actuality was but despite all the pieces being put back were they belong it no longer can be that thing anymore.

Inside this magazine-that-really-wasn't, it said that wolverine are small and fierce. That despite they're size they are very strong. And that they will attack animals larger than themselves, or even numerous animals all at once.

Tanner is definitely a wolverine.

And I am a koala.

Which means, we're not even from the same continent.

I hear the front door click and rattle in its frame as it opens and closes. My uncle is home. His footsteps smack heavily against the floor, even across the carpet his every step is a thunderous boom.

I wonder where he was today. I already know he won't tell me. He won't tell me anything. Where he works, who his friends are, why they call and what they want. I don't really ask, but I wonder.

I think he might be a spy.

Or a bank robber.

Or a martian.

I can't really decide which.

We had a conversation once, a long time ago. Or maybe it seems like it was a long time ago. It was when we first came to live with him; my mom and I, after my dad left and before she lost her job. We were sitting on the coach, this couch I now lay on, watching the television.

Well, he was watching the television.

I was counting bits of dust floating through the air from the chandelier overhead to the spray of light on the floor. It felt like an important task at the time. No one ever keeps track of those kinds of things, you know. Bits of dust are always unaccounted for and people go about their business as though it's no big deal. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dust particles slip through the cracks. It's a tragedy, really.

This was late at night. My mom was at work, because she still had her job then. Actually, I never really knew what her job was either. I guess it doesn't matter now since she lost it.

It happened when the television show my uncle was watching went on commercial. The laugh track stopped its endless loop and a young, attractive man with a phony smile filled the screen to talk about life insurance and how important it is for your loved ones that you take out a policy on your life now in case anything tragic were to happen to you tomorrow and – by the way – Blue Shield Insurance Group happens to have the best policies available for the most affordable prices.

My uncle turned to look at me, his eyes half-lidded because he'd had a couple beers since getting home and I've come to learn through a lot of uncomfortable experiences that they had that effect on people, and said, "So...Timmy-boy, how old are you now?"

I told him my age or near enough and he nodded then burped loudly. It smelled of franks and beans and vaguely like my Grandmother Deloris, who smells like cabbage, menthol, and mothballs which is how I guess all old people smell.

I don't think Grandmother Deloris is actually related to me because she doesn't belong to my dad, his mom died when he was really little. And she doesn't belong to my mom because Grandmother Tippy belongs to her.

Grandmother Tippy lives in Florida and has a pink flamingo in the little 2x2 square lot of grass outside her trailer at the retirement community where she lives. She always gives me peppermints and pinches my cheek every time she sees me and says, 'he sure is getting big', though, when she says 'sure' it sounds like 'shore'.

It isn't true. I'm not very big now and I know I'm not getting any bigger.

My uncle then asked me what grade I was in. But he did it by guessing the grade then asking me if it was right. It was wrong and I told him so. He started to nod but after the first time his chin went down it stayed and didn't come up again.

"You should probably go to bed," he told me, "It's late."

I said that I was fine, and that he looked really tired so maybe he should be going to bed. But he didn't hear me because he was already asleep.

And that was our conversation. We haven't really had any more since then.

I don't think he really likes talking to me.

Most people don't like talking to me.

My uncle stands over me now. He leans his face into my line of vision so that it's all I can see. My mom says he's her younger brother but to me he looks much older than her. His face is all wrinkled in the corners of his eyes and around his mouth and he doesn't have much hair on his head. The wrinkles crinkle with his expressions, and deepen depending on his mood. Right now they're very severe because he looks disapproving.

It doesn't surprise me. Like I said, everyone looks at me like that, disapproving, disappointed, disparate.

He has his hand on his hip, the other rubbing the back of his neck. He looks like he wants to say something to me but he doesn't, he just fidgets his mouth and glares. Sometimes when he does that, it reminds me of Tanner. The Tanner before we were bears.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Yes, I think my uncle is very much like Tanner. His face is red, his nostrils flaring. He is ready to do something explosive and I realize I probably shouldn't be so close. I wonder why he is so angry.

I look at my hands. At the coach. At the floor.

It seems to not make sense. The longer I stare, the less sense it makes. Unraveling thread twines round my fingers, across my chest, and slithers to the floor. The cushion beneath me is spilling its guts, white fluff with tiny black and gray fibers mixed in.

I look to my uncle. Attempt an explanation.

My mouth opens, at least, I think it does, and nothing comes out. I realize, almost frighteningly, I have forgotten how to speak. I think about my tongue, it feels now intrusive in my mouth, a large chunk of flesh pressing against my oral cavity. And my teeth, jagged obstructions, I can't remember their purpose.

"Shit," my uncle says. His face twitches with the word and I feel my body involuntarily mimic the movement. He disappears from my view and I watch the ceiling. Sometimes, I think, if I sit really still and stare for a very long time then I can see shapes swirl across it.

My uncle is shouting. He's calling for my mom. He's slamming things around. He's saying words he slaps me on the mouth for saying. I can't be bothered to see what he is doing or ask if he needs help finding something. I'm looking for a star in the stalactite drywall.

He returns to stand over me, grabs my collar, tries to pull me to my feet. A loud and strangled noise claws out my throat but I don't think it was me, it didn't sound like me. He's got something in his hand, he's shouting commands in my face, prying at my mouth. I fight because it seems the appropriate thing to do.

My mom is shuffling down the hall. My uncle slips something in my mouth. Its small, oblong, almost like a pebble, it tastes bitter on my tongue.

"Swallow damn you!" His hand is on my throat, he's shaking me. My body feels numb.

"Let him go, God damn you, Jeremy! Get the hell off my son!"

Tears are streaming down my cheeks. Another pebble is shoved into my mouth. They both dig into my throat, tunneling a path into my digestive system like mechanical drills.

"How the fuck many of these is he supposed to take?" My uncle demands. My mom is slapping him, her bare hands snap against his meaty bicep, jiggling the flesh like gelatinous dessert.

"Let him go, I said let him go!"

He lets me go. I fall back onto the coach, coughing uncontrollably. My mom is shrieking. My uncle is shrieking also.

"I told you to keep your hands off my son, goddammit, Jeremy, I told you!"

I stare at the ceiling again. I fold my hands on my belly. For a moment, only a moment, my world was splotched. Yellow and white. It was so much prettier yellow and white.

"And I told you to make sure your goddamn son takes his pills, Evelyn. Or I swear – _I swear_ – I will toss him out on the streets where he belongs with the rest of the nutjobs. He tore up my coach, for Chrissake, look at it. Tore up his goddamn fingers too..."

The pills sit in my stomach, heavy for their size. I let the tears stream down freely, silently. I'm not sad or upset. I just like the warm feel of them trailing down my cheeks.

"Fuck you, Jeremy. Fuck you! He told me he took his pills, what the hell else do you want me to do?"

There are no stars or any other shapes in the ceiling anymore. I'm starting to realize there never were. It's impossible, after all. It's just a ceiling.

"Shove 'em down his fucking throat if you have to. You're his mother, for crying out..."

Everything is just as it is. There are no stars in the ceiling. There is no sky of good memories under the table. Tanner is not a wolverine. I am not a koala.

"You gotta throw that in my face every goddamn time, Jeremy? Every goddamn, fucking time. Like I wanted a psychotic kid in the first fucking place?"

And we are no longer bears.


	3. Chapter 3

_Thank you for the review._

* * *

Chapter 3:

Dr. Rosalyn is very attractive. Her hair is long, straight, and dark chocolatey brown. Her eyes are gray, they sit deep in her face and are slightly closer together than normal. She has freckles and tiny, thin lips. When she smiles, her teeth look a little too big for her mouth. She sits on a large, fluffy chair, her legs one on top of the other, and watches me behind oval-shaped, black-rimmed glasses.

In her office there is a large desk that is cluttered with things and she never seems to ever use it. There is a potted plant I suspect is fake because it never changes, the leaves are always in the same position, and its always the same green. There is a large, brown trunk of stuffed animals, mostly teddy-bears and one or two baby-dolls. Two bookshelves, black metal, lined with thick, heavy-looking tomes, their spines feature fancy lettered titles with big medical words. A golden floor lamp with a painted glass shade. And a bucket of every color crayon imaginable which she lets me use to draw on the walls.

"And how are you feeling today, Timothy," she says.

It's always the same opening question with her. Ever since that first day I came to see her, sometime near the end of fifth grade.

Usually I'm prepared for it, an answer framed neatly in my mind, along with appropriate pauses, inflections, and minute facial twitches. This time, I haven't thought much about an answer. So I choose a new crayon instead, a shade of blue – Robin's Egg, to be specific. I've never seen a robin's egg before, so I don't know how close to the real color it actually is, but the crayon will be perfect for my sky.

"Last time I saw you, there was a game you wanted to go see. You want to tell me how it went?"

Game.

I worry my lip and draw my brow together. I think about the last time I went to see a game.

It was a baseball game. Between my school and another, everyone called them 'our rivals'. Though, I don't recall ever being told before that day of this rivalry. Everyone was excited. I was excited. Tanner was still on the team then. He, and Engleberg, and Ahmad, and Toby, and Kelly; they were all on the team, and they were all playing that night. I remember thinking back then, sitting high up in the bleachers shivering in the chilly night air, how far away from looking like bears they now were, dressed in those gold and black uniforms.

I can remember it so clearly because it was the last game Tanner played for the high school. Our team won, twenty-six to nothing.

"Timothy," Dr. Rosalyn calls. I snap my eyes on her, blink a few times for good measure. "I asked if you went to the game?"

"No," I tell her.

I select another blue – Cerulean – and start another level of sky.

Sky, if you ever take the time to notice, is not wholly the same color blue. It starts almost white then gradually crawls its way to a near violet complexion. Then the sky ends and it becomes space. Space, of course, is pitch black. There are no levels to the black of space.

"I see," she sounds disappointed. She leans forward, braces her arms against her knees, and smiles down on me. "Perhaps next time. I know how much you like going to the games."

Not really anymore. It's not the same, now that Tanner is not playing. I think to tell her so much but it doesn't feel appropriate.

"You're mother tells me you haven't been doing very well in school. That she received a call from your teacher, about slipping grades?"

I choose another blue – Cadet – furiously rub it across the wall until it bleeds.

"Grades do that," I answer reasonably.

"Only if you let them."

"You don't have to let them," I say.

"Really? Why do you say that?"

I put the crayon down. Twist round and look at her earnestly. "It's hard to stay up. Falling is easy."

She clicks the pen in her hand so that its ballpoint tip darts in and out. She always has a pen in her hand, so she can use it to write things in the pad of paper she currently has stuffed between her thigh and the cushioned arm of her chair.

"And why do you say that?"

I blink.

"Because it's natural to fall."

"Oh." It wasn't an 'oh, I get it', but an 'oh well, that's not what I thought you would say'.

I shake my head. Give a withered sigh. Honestly, I shouldn't have to explain these things to her. She's the one with the PhD.

"You see, in the world, there are all these forces constantly working to pull you down."

"You mean gravity?"

I like Dr. Rosalyn. She always listens very intently when I speak, leaning forward as though she wants to soak up my every word. I know that it's only because she wants to later dissect and analyze them, but it's still nice. I'm not used to people listening to me. Most of the time they don't have the patience to wait until I have something to say. Dr. Rosalyn, as she told me once years ago, has all the patience in the world.

"Gravity. Yeah. I guess that's one of them. Sure. Anyhow...to be 'up' you have to fight against these forces – like gravity, every minute of every day. But when you fall, it's like you're working with these forces. Kind of like Pooh."

She straightens. Tilts her head to the side and scrunches her forehead.

"Like...what?"

"Pooh," I repeat, exasperation is sinking into my pores. "Winnie the."

She shakes her head and smiles. Flicks a stray strand of hair from her face then leans forward, again, ready to lap up my every spoken thought.

I'm finished with the sky. Now I search for a yellow to start on the sun. It has to be the right yellow. Because you can't just make the sun any shade of yellow. It has to be bold, bright, iridescent, _incandescent_. It has to be the kind of yellow that exudes the confidence of a billions of years old star.

"I suppose Winnie the Pooh is a bit of a clumsy bear," Dr. Rosalyn remarks. It doesn't really make sense but I let it slide. After all, she always lets me slide when I say things that don't fit.

"He works with the forces in the world," I tell her absently. I've lost interest in this topic. I can't even remember what got us talking about it.

I'm thinking about Tanner now.

Again.

Actually, I'm not sure I ever stopped thinking about him. He has a way of entangling himself in your mind. Almost like a cyst growing on the edge of your cerebellum. No matter how you try, you can't get rid of him. He just sits there, accumulating bits of your throwaway thoughts – like daydreams, and bad ideas – and he takes up more and more space until eventually, he's all that there is.

"Does he? I don't remember that from the stories," she says. I catch a hint of humor in her tone. I think she might be mocking me. I can never be certain. Those kinds of emotions confuse me. They're complicated and they stem from so many roots.

"It's in his book. About the Way and flow and things like that," I insist, my voice teeters with frustration.

I can't find the right yellow. It has to be here. Goldenrod won't do and the sun is no Cannery. I put each shade I find aside. Not a single sun amongst them.

Yellow is a tricky color.

I had this problem once before when I drew a picture of Tanner. Well, it was of all of them, when we were bears. Even Coach – Buttermaker, not Murdoch. I gave him a big, round belly and put a brown bottle in his hand. Dr. Rosalyn didn't like my answer when she asked what the bottle had inside.

Tanner is blond. But the color is so light, it's almost translucent. It flutters loose, ethereal around his face. Matching it with a crayon is next to nearly impossible.

When I had stopped the drawing and left it unfinished, Dr. Rosalyn asked me what was wrong. I had spilled the bucket of crayons across her shag carpet floor and crossed to the other side of the room, playing with the soft leaves of her 'plant'. I told her the problem, that Tanner was blond and the right color for his hair wasn't in the bucket.

She picked up a yellow from the ground and held it out to me then and said, 'I always make my blond friends with this color.' I took the crayon from her, looked at it, threw it across the room. It hit the wall and broke in half. I told her – I yelled at her...I never yell, 'I can't just make his hair any old shade of yellow, I can't!'

She asked me why.

I couldn't tell her. I couldn't make my mouth form the words. She should have been able to see. The reason was so obvious, any one should have been able to see.

If I used any old color, if I drew his hair in any old shade, without care for accuracy, then it wouldn't be him. It would be a lie. A terrible, horrible lie. And if I did that, if I lied, then all the rest of them would be there, all the bears, every last one of them...except Tanner.

I couldn't stand the thought. It hurt too much, like a choke hold on my heart.

So I cried and Dr. Rosalyn had to end our session early because no matter how she tried or what she said, she couldn't make the tears stop.

"I see. You mean, in the _Tao of Pooh_," Dr. Rosalyn says, "You didn't tell me you've been reading. You're mother mentioned you've been having trouble concentrating on things lately. Tell me, Timothy, when did you read this book?"

I kick the bucket over. There is no yellow. There is no sun in that bucket. No sun. No yellow. No Tanner.

"I don't know," I snap, "I don't know!"

Dr. Rosalyn watches me, silent, calm, as I walk away from the wall and towards the doll trunk. I kneel on the floor, shuffle through the different stuffed critters inside. I select a scruffy bear from the bottom, its seams are coming loose and one of the eyes is missing. I hold it out and frown at it.

I whisper, "I bet you know a thing or two about bad news." Then I hug its softness to my chest. There's an unspeakable comfort in holding something small and fluffy, it soothes the aches inside.

"I noticed this bump on your head. How did that happen?" Dr. Rosalyn says from her chair. She's attempting to engage me again.

She's always attempting.

Its part of the check-up process. She tells me 'some doctors check your body, I have to check your words'. I'm not entirely certain what she sees in my words – how they can tell her if I'm alright or not – but sometimes I worry about it, sometimes so much so that I'm too afraid to even speak.

"I was hit."

"Hit?" I hear the concern heavy in her tone and I like the way it rushes over me, silken and tingling.

"We were playing baseball."

"Oh," she straightens, her clothes ruffle and chair creaks, "We?"

I smile to myself at memories I'm not altogether certain I remember correctly but could care less either way because they're pleasant and warm my toes, "Tanner and me."

"Tanner," she repeats, "As in...Tanner from your Little League team."

Click. Clack. Click.

The pen tip darts in.

Out.

In.

"I see. So you and Tanner were hanging out?"

"Sort of," I mumble, the pleasant feeling is leaving, "We were in class."

"Oh, P.E. You...weren't...hanging out, then?"

I fiddle with the stuffed bear's paws.

"We were on the same team," I point out, I feel like I'm arguing with her but I don't think we're actually disagreeing on anything. I tell her, "Coach Murdoch made Tanner team captain. He picked me."

That was right. I remember. He did pick me. We had stood lined up on the pavement surrounding the school baseball field. Tanner and another boy, Billy-with-braces, had stood across from us, looking us up and down. They each called out names, and the boys those names belonged to jogged to stand by their chooser.

I didn't bother paying attention. I knew I would be last. Every captain that Coach Murdoch had ever elected always left me for last, and I had known Tanner and Billy-with-braces would be no different.

And then my name was called. I had been startled at first, and very confused, and I didn't react. There were still eight other boys left waiting impatient, it wasn't yet time to meander over to the team burdened with me.

But Tanner had insisted. _Loop. Looper. Lupis. Ferchrissake. Get the fuck over here!_

"Really? And which position did you play?" Dr. Rosalyn smiles, leans back in her chair, unfolds her legs then refolds them with the other now on top.

I put the bear back into the trunk. Pace the room a couple times.

"Why is there no chair for me?"

She opens her mouth, looks thoughtful a moment, then smiles again.

"You can sit at my desk if you'd like. I used to have a beanbag chair, but one of my former patients popped it. Spilled the beans, so to speak."

She giggles at her own pun. I don't but she doesn't mind. She never minds when I fail to laugh at her jokes, or when I forget to smile, or frown, forget to react, or evne when I cry or laugh or react in ways I shouldn't.

"I haven't really thought to replace it since. Most of my patients always sat on the floor when I had the chair and no one has really complained about it being gone. I guess I could look for a new one, though, if you'd like."

I take a seat at the chair behind her desk. I never knew it was back there. It swivels. And rolls.

The desk is covered with neatly stacked papers. Some are clipped or stapled together. There's also a laptop; it's closed. And there is a tape recorder, it has a red light blinking in the corner of its display screen. I once asked Dr. Rosalyn how she could remember the things I said after she had mentioned that she would review our session later. She had told me she records everything but I had never seen the recorder before. I pick it up to inspect it.

"You didn't answer my question," Dr. Rosalyn softly says.

I put the tape recorder down again and push it to the top corner of her desk near a few framed photos of people I don't know and a mug full of black pens.

"Timothy? Which position did you play?"

"Outfield...right," I murmur.

"Is that where you were when the ball hit you?" she questions.

"Yes," I say. I squirm a little in the chair. It really was such a nice day. Tanner had picked me. But I had ruined it all. I should have caught the ball but I didn't. I let him down.

Click. Clack. Click.

"Well, at least you're okay," she tells me. "Was everyone worried?"

"Yes." I say.

Then, "No."

And then, "Just Tanner. He took me to the nurse's office."

"He did? Well that was nice of him."

"Yeah," I beam, "We talked, on the way there. It was a long walk. He doesn't have a girlfriend. I thought he did...because...well...but no. He doesn't. He asked me how my head was and I told him it was okay. I told him about how I miss Summer, when we were Bears, and then the bell rang and he told me to get checked out by the nurse, I think because he was still worried and then he left because he's a cloud."

"Oh."

"He's _like_ a cloud. He isn't actually a cloud. Just...that...he's _like_ one. Sort of. Kind of. I think."

"I see." She sighs. Shifts in her chair and it squeaks with her movement. "Sounds like you had a lot of fun walking to the nurse."

Someone knocks on the door and I swivel in the chair while Dr. Rosalyn answers.

"Timothy Lupis's mother is here," a man says outside. He works at the front desk of the clinic, signing people in and scheduling their next sessions and taking their money.

"Our time must be up then." Dr. Rosalyn calls to me over her shoulder, then tells the man, "Send her in, please."

The waiting room isn't very far from Dr. Rosalyn's office. Just seventeen steps from the third chair. I always sit in the third chair when I'm waiting. My mom only takes a few seconds and Dr. Rosalyn closes the door after she enters. I study the drawer handles – they're brass – as my mom and Dr. Rosalyn talk together. I only sometimes listen to what they say even though I know they're talking about me.

"And he's been taking his medication since then?"

"Yes...I've seen to it. Of course, I have to stand over him and watch him swallow the damn things now..."

"Right...I warned you that might happen. I think we'll need to adjust his antipsychotics. I'm going to write a new prescription for now and you'll want to watch him this next month...you know the drill. We'll also schedule an appointment in two weeks."

I hate when Dr. Rosalyn changes my pills. Sometimes it makes everything better. Most times it makes everything worse. It makes me sick. My stomach wraps around itself and I can't eat. I throw up all the time. I can't move, can't even get out of bed. I can't see straight.

"Tanner."

I startle. My face warms. For a moment, I think I'm hearing things. Again.

But then Dr. Rosalyn says, "They used to play on that little league team together."

My mom nods and I think she looks uncertain. She doesn't remember the Bears.

"Timothy said he and Tanner spent time together the other day," Dr. Rosalyn explains, "He seemed to enjoy it."

"Yes. Well, they really aren't friends, I think. They don't play anymore. Timmy doesn't go out much," my mom replies.

Every molecule of air feels hard and pointed.

_ They aren't friends. _

It sounds so strange and volatile spoken aloud.

Tanner. Me.

We.

Are not.

Friends.

"...a shame. When he was on that team, his negative symptoms showed real improvement," Dr. Rosalyn comments. She sounds sad.

Sometimes, if you squint your eyes and listen very hard, you can see the color of a person's sadness. I wonder if there's a crayon to draw Dr. Rosalyn's sadness with in her bucket.

I wonder if there's one to draw mine.


End file.
